The Motorola Rokr E8: Cell Phone Review

The Motorola Rokr is one of those phones that has successfully brought back the single body design. It's thicker than the RAZR V3, and at 4.5 inches tall and 2 inches wide, it has a reasonably tall, thin design that fits in the hand like a chocolate bar. Its keyboard design is a welcome departure from Motorola's boilerplate grid design with small gray icons set against a slightly "smoked" black background. The scroll wheel enables easy menu and feature navigation. There is a small caveat, though, as the scroll wheel is a bit too sensitive. Some practice is needed to get the light touch needed not to breeze past your desired menu selections. Since there are no physical keys, Motorola has loaded haptic feedback onto the ROKR E8; it vibrates whenever a virtual button is pressed.

The 2 inch screen sports a great graphic display where you can adjust the backlighting and brightness. And the "Modeshift" keypad is a great little feature that tells you what menu mode you're in. If you're in music mode, the phone key pad disappears and is replaced by the "play" and "rewind" music controls. Camera mode is highlighted the same way, and it makes the interface so easy that it reduces the risk of "feature fatigue" a potential problem for all multi-featured mobile phones where users get overloaded with too many visual options. With Motorola's Rokr, you don't have to deal with more controls than you need to, at any one time. That said, there is a sluggishness in the menu responsiveness that seems to be due to T-mobile's software. This shortcoming may well resolve itself with software upgrades.

Motorola also provides a 3.5 mm jack that enables use of a headset for its music player. The phone definitely substantiates Motorola's claim that the Rockr is a "music phone" with a music interface that's easy to use. It has 2GB of internal memory which claims to store approximately 3000 songs. It synchs easily with Windows Media Player but Mac users have to transfer files via Micro SD.

The phone also has Bluetooth, a full HTML browser, and a 2.0 Mega pixel camera with an 8X zoom. And last but not least, let's get to the heart of mobile phone functionality : call signal integrity. Rokr's Crystal Talk technology claims to markedly reduce background noise during calls. This reviewer did notice a perceptibly better-than-average transmission quality, where I didn't have to do the classic clamp my free ear down to hear my friend as a subway train was passing overhead. Crystal Talk does in fact seem to be more than just marketing speak. Motorola has patented a series of algorithms that help differentiate a caller's voice from background noise.

Voices sounded very clear in conversations in the office building as well as on the street. Friends on the other line reported unusually good quality as well. Reception was a bit unusual at times. The phone would dip into "Emergency Calls Only" territory, then bounce back to four bars while I was standing in place. Regardless, when I had enough reception to complete a call, it always sounded great. For battery life, I got just over 6 hours of talk time in a single call, which is pretty good.

All in all, the lean and mean design and functionality of the Rokr will become better once T-mobile's software upgrades catch up with Motorola's ingenuity.